1. Technical Field
Disclosed embodiments relate generally, by way of example and not limitation, to systems and methods that permit a financial-institution customer holding a debit card (i.e., cardholder) to direct refunds of debit-card withdrawal fees paid by the customer, for example, at automatic teller machines (ATMs), to various accounts, including, but not limited to, the cardholder's savings accounts or investment accounts.
2. History of Related Art
In recent years, usage of debit cards has increased greatly. One of the primary ways in which debit cards are used by financial-institution customers (i.e., cardholders) is at ATMs. Most ATMs permit cardholders to withdraw funds from their accounts, check their account balances, deposit funds into their accounts, and transfer funds between their accounts.
One disadvantage of ATMs from the cardholder's perspective is the withdrawal fees that are oftentimes charged at ATMs. Some ATMs charge some substantial withdrawal fees to cardholders who are not associated with the bank or other financial institution providing the ATM the cardholder seeks to use. These fees are typically at least $1.00 and, in some cases, can be as great as $3.00 per transaction or more.
As would be expected, many cardholders are not particularly pleased with the practice of ATMs of charging withdrawal fees, the cardholders' reasoning being that the money in their accounts is already theirs and that it is not fair for the cardholder to be charged to withdraw their own money, especially given the fact that the costs associated with an ATM are less than the costs associated with having a human bank teller available to service the cardholders' cash withdrawals from their accounts. Of course, from the perspective of many financial institutions, charging withdrawal fees is reasonable, especially when the cardholder is not a customer of the financial institution that provides the ATM.
In light of the above, some financial institutions have begun to refund ATM withdrawal fees to their customers. In some cases, the refund of the ATM withdrawal fees is made regardless of the financial institution providing the ATM used by the cardholder. In some cases, the customer is required to collect ATM receipts and provide them to their financial institution in order to obtain refund of the corresponding withdrawal fees. In other cases, the refund occurs automatically without any cardholder involvement being necessary. The refund can appear as a credit to the cardholder's checking account in order to offset the portion of the withdrawal that corresponds to the ATM withdrawal fee for a given transaction or, in another option, the ATM withdrawal fee may appear to the cardholder to have not been debited to the cardholder's checking account at all.